DENVER, COLORADO-May 25, 2005-Colorado Gov. Bill Owens joined with area law enforcement members to announce programs to keep aggressive and impaired drivers off of Colorado roads this Memorial Day weekend with DUI sobriety checkpoints. Electronic signs like this will be placed at the checkpoints.

Gov. Bill Ritter this afternoon reversed course on plans to divert money designated for drunken-driving enforcement to help shore up the state’s ailing budget.

The decision means the “Heat Is On” campaign will continue at least through the end of the year, with extra patrols planned over Labor Day and Halloween weekends and a four-day stretch laden with office parties.

“The governor was concerned about it,” said Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer. “He has directed that funding for the campaigns for the rest of this year remain fully funded.”

Still at issue is funding for 2010.

Ritter, struggling to close a budget gap estimated at $318 million, had planned to divert more than $1.3 million. The money, raised by a surcharge imposed on everyone convicted of an alcohol-related traffic offense in Colorado, has been used to pay overtime for cops working the “Heat Is On” crackdowns on long holiday weekends.

At stake is money in the Law Enforcement Assistance Fund, or LEAF, which was created in 1983.

Everyone convicted of an alcohol-related traffic offense in Colorado pays a $90 fine, approximately a third of which goes to the Transportation Department to fund grants for DUI enforcement.

The money is doled out to local law-enforcement agencies. This year, a total of $1.4 million was available to 56 police and sheriff’s departments. Of that, about $375,000 was expected to be left after the Labor Day enforcement campaign — money that Ritter initially froze in an executive order issued Saturday.

Ritter also planned to ask the legislature to divert nearly $1 million in LEAF money in 2010 to drug- and alcohol-treatment programs, a move that he would like to make permanent.

The 7,800-acre Winter Valley Fire in Moffat County was 100 percent contained Tuesday as visible smoke from interior islands showed minimal creeping behavior, according to the Bureau of Land Management.